Printers that are designed for printing on a continuous strip of media from a media roll generally feed the media from the roll to a print station along a guide path. In order to accomplish proper positioning of the printed matter on the media at the print station, proper lateral tracking of the media as it moves along the guide path is desirable. Conventionally, lateral tracking has been accomplished by using inner and outer edge guides that are positioned to abut the opposite edges of the media and hold the media laterally in position as it moves along the path between the edge guides. In known printers, both of the edge guides may be fixed, or one or both of the edge guides may be movable. In the former case, loading of the media in the printer requires that the media be threaded through the guide path from the media roll to the print station. This can be a time consuming and tedious procedure. To avoid the necessity for threading the media, the outer edge guide may be mounted to be movable from its use position adjacent to a side edge of the guide path to an open position in which it is clear of the side of the guide path. This permits an operator to load the media into the printer by moving the outer edge guide into its open position and then sliding the media into the guide path through the open outer side of the guide path. Once the media has been moved into the guide path, the outer edge guide may be moved back into its use position preparatory to the printing of the media.
It is generally desirable for a printer to be sufficiently versatile to print on media having a variety of widths. In printers having an inner edge guide and an outer edge guide, whether or not the outer edge guide is removable, one or both of the edge guides needs to be adjustable in order to accommodate varying media widths. If the outer edge guide is adjustable but is not movable into an open position, it sometimes must be repositioned and then readjusted each time a new media roll is installed.
An example of a type of printer designed for continuous media is a thermal label printer that prints information, such as bar codes, on labels removably secured to a continuous carrier strip by pressure sensitive adhesive. Bar code labels vary in size and are often required to be quite small. For small labels, it is desirable to have tight registration of the bar code information on the label, with the printed matter extending very close to the edges of the label. This arrangement requires very accurate lateral tracking of the blank labels as they are moved toward the print station.